Category Archives: sustainability

Constructed wetlands are artificially created systems that mimic natural wetlands’ function of purifying water. In this case, they treat household wastewater, or greywater, which, apart from a few contaminants, is relatively clean and capable of being reused. NOTE: We do not treat toilet water, or blackwater, as it is called. This system consists of several bathtubs filled with gravel, which have water plants growing inside them. Wastewater passing through the aerobic root zones of the plants is cleaned by the bacteria living there. The bacteria consume organic nutrients while the plants themselves uptake nitrogen and phosphorus. By the time it exists the system, the water has been made safe for reuse in irrigating vegetable crops. Plants used in this system include: bulrush, taro, cattail, papyrus, swamp hibiscus, canna lilly and phragmittes reeds.

The classic sci-fi film Soylent Green will be the launching point for a discussion about criminal and food injustice.

In the year 2022 New York City is crowded with the homeless and hungry. While most are barely kept alive by state-rationed soylent green, the elite live in luxury high-rises stocked with delicacies. The mysterious death of an agro-business board member throws Police Detective Thorn (Charlton Heston) into the secret world of the necro-food industrial complex.

The film is an opportunity to consider imagined and actual injustices, and imagined and actual strategies of resistance, in NYC 2022 and NYC 2014.

Trees are a fact of nature that allows humanity and wildlife to survive and thrive. As the producers and preservers of our air quality, its of supreme importance that trees remain a quintessential facet of our landscape, regardless of its increasingly urban/suburban character. Furthermore, trees offer us varying fruits for our labor. These include an array of nuts, berries, and other ingredients such as: